{Review} Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1) by Lexa Hillyer

Posted by Donna
Release Date: April 11th, 2017
Finished Date: July 27th, 2017

Publishers: HarperTeen
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Source: For Review
Format: eARC

Pages: 351
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US / The Book Depo 

 

A kingdom burns. A princess sleeps. This is no fairy tale.

It all started with the burning of the spindles.

No.

It all started with a curse…

Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.

And then everything changes, with a single drop of Aurora’s blood—and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken.

As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.

Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls; and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape…or the reason for her to stay.

The Review: Spindle Fire has only been on my radar for a few months after I kept seeing it pop up every now and then over Instagram. I decided to look it up and even though there are quite a few mixed reviews, I was intrigued enough to want to try it. I’m always looking for new retelling stories and with this being a retelling of both Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland I was immediately excited to see how the author could combine both stories into one but I was honestly just disappointed when I started.

The story is told by two different narratives, Isabelle & Aurora. Isabelle and Aurora are very different. For starters, Aurora is the illegitimate daughter of the king while the other, Isbe is not as she was born out of wed lock and has a different mother to Aurora. Aurora is lost her sense of touch and her voice to faeries as payment, while Isbe loses her sight. I actually really liked this aspect of the story and thought it was unique and interesting. I’ve read a lot of faery books in the past and haven’t come across this as yet so it was definitely something new and fresh. But just this one likable thing couldn’t hold my interest for long.

As the story progresses both of the girls start their own journeys which leads them onto different paths but ultimately trying to reach the same ending. This is where the problem for me lies. Once their journeys start I actually started to lose interest in the story. Each sister is basically telling each retelling, and for me it just didn’t work. I found the stories became confusing and as we get further into the faery world, it didn’t make sense. The girl’s stories were going in completely different situations that once again didn’t make sense – more so Aurora’s story.

I have to admit I’m not a patient reader. If a book doesn’t grab me within the first 100 pages or so then I start to lose interest. And I lost interest very quickly with this book and this why I decided to not finish the book at around 47%. If anything I actually gave this book more time than I normally would.

Thank you to HarperTeen for giving me the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.